Law Commons^™

Whom (Or What) Does The Organization's Lawyer Represent?: An Anatomy Of Intraclient Conflict, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Professional responsibility issues involving organizational clients are distinctively difficult because organizations consist of constituents with conflicting interests. Legal doctrine has only recently begun to address the effect of internal conflict on a lawyer's responsibilities to an organizational client. Under current doctrine, the lawyer's responsibilities differ strongly depending on whether the representation is characterized as 'joint" representation of the organization 's constituents or "entity" representation. This Article argues that the choice between the two characterizations often has been arbitrary and that the underlying differences between them have been misunderstood. With respect to entity representation, it criticizes a prominent tendency in the …